Tunisia is a sweet place to visit, not least because of the evocative Roman ruins overlaying tantalizing traces of the even more ancient Carthaginian civilization. Carthage is a city that has had a privileged place in my imagination since I read The Aeneid as a teenager. Knowing their pimply and disaffected teenaged audience, the Correspondence School chose the three most dramatic books of The Aeneid on their curriculum: Book II (The Fall of Troy), Book VI (Aeneas’ Visit to the Underworld) and Book IV (Aeneas’ Doomed Love Affair with Dido).
Dido, otherwise known as Alyssa, was Queen of Tyre until her brother killed her husband Sychaeus. She fled Tyre with supporters and they sought refuge in North Africa. Iarbas, a local king, said she could have as much land as could fit inside an oxhide. She promptly cut it extremely fine and looped it around Byrsa Hill, prime real estate that still affords a lovely sea view. Iarbas didn’t object but decided she’d make a good wife so unsuccessfully tried to woo her. She respectfully declined and threw herself into directing her people to build a city, which they did enthusiastically.
Dido is the epitome of a tragic heroine. In the first place, she is powerful—dynamic and an effective leader of her people. In the second place, she is a sassy survivor—she overcame persecution with exceptional courage and wit. Thirdly (this is where the ‘tragic’ comes in), she is fatally deceived by the gods to love Aeneas, just as Hector was fatally deceived by Athena in The Iliad. There are those that claim Dido lacks pietas (proper reverence for the gods) compared to Aeneas but I don’t really think that’s true; she is very pious until the gods trick her like the sociopaths they are.
The Aeneid used to be almost as well known as the Bible. Dante‘s Commedia has sometimes been interpreted as Dante’s attempt to create a Christian Aeneid. And it is otherwise in the subconscious of European literature: you can find echoes of it in Petrarch, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Flaubert and Joyce to name a tiny few. Somewhere along the line (possibly due to centuries of being forced down scholars’ throats) it fell from favour.
Since there have been countless works of art depicting scenes from it, here is an illustrated overview of the story with excerpts of the poem (in English translated by Theodore C. Williams unless otherwise indicated).
The Storm (Book I)
Juno sees Aeneas and his men sailing off the coast of Sicily, getting ever closer to Italy, where Aeneas is destined to found the Roman race. Juno loves Carthage and she has heard the Romans are destined to destroy it. She begs Aeolus to blow them off course with a storm.
Uprouse thy gales. Strike that proud navy down!
Hurl far and wide, and strew the waves with dead!
Up surged the waves
to strike the very stars; in fragments flew
the shattered oars; the helpless vessel veered
and gave her broadside to the roaring flood,
where watery mountains rose and burst and fell.
Neptune sees the ruckus and gets annoyed that Aeolus is interfering.
Now, winds, you dare to embroil the sky and the earth without my approval,
and raise up such a mass?
You whom I— But it is better to settle the agitated waves.
He spoke, and swiftlier than his word subdued
the swelling of the floods; dispersed afar
th’ assembled clouds, and brought back light to heaven.
Approaching the Shore
Aeneas’ wave-worn crew now landward made,
and took the nearest passage, whither lay
the coast of Libya. A haven there
walled in by bold sides of a rocky isle,
offers a spacious and secure retreat,
where every billow from the distant main
breaks, and in many a rippling curve retires.
Huge crags and two confronted promontories
frown heaven-high, beneath whose brows outspread
the silent, sheltered wall
clear springs gush out; and shelving seats it has
of unhewn stone, a place the wood-nymphs love.
Landing in Libya
Aeneas struggles ashore, not sure if his compatriots survived. He is met by a huntress, who tells him where he is and who Dido is.
“Yonder lies
“The Punic power, where Tyrian masters hold
“Agenor’s town; but on its borders dwell
“The Libyans, by battles unsubdued.
“Upon the throne is Dido, exiled there
“From Tyre, to flee th’ unnatural enmity
“Of her own brother. ’T was an ancient wrong;
“Too long the dark and tangled tale would be”
As she turns away he realizes the huntress is his mother Venus and feels betrayed.
“Why is thy son deluded o’er and o’er
“With mocking dreams,—another cruel god?
“Hast thou no hand-clasp true, nor interchange
“Of words unfeigned betwixt this heart and thine?”
Covered by a protective magic cloud, the Trojans wander through Carthage, wondering at the magnificence and industry of the city.
Meanwhile the wanderers swiftly journey on
Along the clear-marked road, and soon they climb
The brow of a high hill, which close in view
O’er-towers the city’s crown. The vast exploit,
Where lately rose but Afric cabins rude,
Æneas wondered at: the smooth, wide ways;
The bastioned gates; the uproar of the throng.
The Tyrians toil unwearied; some up-raise
A wall or citadel, from far below
Lifting the ponderous stone; or with due care
Choose where to build, and close the space around
With sacred furrow; in their gathering-place
The people for just governors, just laws,
And for their reverend senate shout acclaim.
Some clear the harbor mouth; some deeply lay
The base of a great theatre, and carve out
Proud columns from the mountain, to adorn
Their rising stage with lofty ornament.
Dido Meets Aeneas
Protected in the magic cloud, Aeneas observes Dido holding court in the temple.
Then at the sacred portal and beneath
The temple’s vaulted dome she took her place,
Encompassed by armed men, and lifted high
Upon a throne; her statutes and decrees
The people heard, and took what lot or toil
Her sentence, or impartial urn, assigned.
To his surprise, he sees two of his fellow shipwrecks and observes Dido expressing sympathy for Trojans as fellow refugees. When she offers them safe harbor, Aeneas decides to reveal himself and thanks her prettily.
Sidonian Dido felt her heart stand still
When first she looked on him; and thrilled again
To hear what vast adventure had befallen
So great a hero. […]
“I also bore
“Hard fate like thine. I too was driven of storms
“And after long toil was allowed at last
“To call this land my home. O, I am wise
“In sorrow, and I help all suffering souls!”
Hospitality Time
She bade Æneas welcome take
Beneath her royal roof, and to the gods
Made sacrifice in temples, while she sent
Unto the thankful Trojans on the shore
A score of bulls, and of huge, bristling swine,
A herd of a whole hundred, and a flock
Of goodly lambs, a hundred, who ran close
Beside the mother-ewes: and all were given
In joyful feast to please the Heavenly Powers
Aeneas sends men to fetch rich gifts and his son Ascanius (also called Iulus) from the ships. Venus, sly as ever, replaces Ascanius with Cupid and instructs him to make Dido fall in love with Aeneas.
“All smiles and joy, shall clasp thee to her breast,
“While she caresses thee, and her sweet lips
“Touch close with thine, then let thy secret fire
“Breathe o’er her heart, to poison and betray.”
Father Æneas now, and all his band
Of Trojan chivalry, at social feast,
On lofty purple-pillowed couches lie;
Deft slaves fresh water on their fingers pour,
And from reed-woven basketry renew
The plenteous bread, or bring smooth napery
Of softest weave; fifty handmaidens serve,
Whose task it is to range in order fair
The varied banquet, or at altars bright
Throw balm and incense on the sacred fires.
A hundred more serve with an equal band
Of beauteous pages, whose obedient skill
Piles high the generous board and fills the bowl.
The Tyrians also to the festal hall
Come thronging, and receive their honor due,
Each on his painted couch; with wondering eyes
Æneas’ gifts they view, and wondering more,
Mark young Iulus’ radiant brows divine,
His guileful words, the golden pall he bears,
And broidered veil with saffron lilies bound.
He round Æneas’ neck his arms entwined,
Fed the deep yearning of his seeming sire,
Then sought the Queen’s embrace; her eyes, her soul
Clave to him as she strained him to her breast.
For Dido knew not in that fateful hour
How great a god betrayed her. He began,
Remembering his mother (she who bore
The lovely Acidalian Graces three),
To make the dear name of Sichæus fade,
And with new life, new love, to re-possess
Her long-since slumbering bosom’s lost desire.
After dinner, Dido proposes a toast to the Trojans and then asks Aeneas to tell the tale of his travels.
Dido the while
With varying talk prolonged the fateful night,
And drank both long and deep of love and wine.
The Tale (Book II)
Aeneas goes over the whole sorry tale.
The Fall of Troy…
The ghost of Aeneas’ wife tells him his destiny is future founder of Rome.
Pulls up a myrtle tree that starts bleeding, which means he has to bury the murdered corpse of his friend…
Visits Andromache (Hector’s wife) who was enslaved and now lives with another Trojan…
Fighting Harpies…
And seeing Etna and a giant…
And Aeneas’ father Anchises dies.
Such my last loss and pain;
Such, of my weary way, the destined goal.
From thence departing, the divine behest
Impelled me to thy shores, O listening queen!
Love (Book IV)
Dido confides in her sister Anna.
“My dearest Anna, what new dreams affright
My lab’ring soul! what visions of the night
Disturb my quiet, and distract my breast
With strange ideas of our Trojan guest!” (trans. Dryden)
Anna replies very sensibly:
“Think you these tears, this pompous train of woe,
Are known or valued by the ghosts below? […]
Propitious Heav’n, and gracious Juno, lead
This wand’ring navy to your needful aid:
How will your empire spread, your city rise,
From such a union, and with such allies?
Implore the favour of the pow’rs above,
And leave the conduct of the rest to love.”
So Dido considers this permission to obsess.
Sick with desire, and seeking him she loves,
From street to street the raving Dido roves.
So when the watchful shepherd, from the blind,
Wounds with a random shaft the careless hind,
Distracted with her pain she flies the woods,
Bounds o’er the lawn, and seeks the silent floods,
With fruitless care; for still the fatal dart
Sticks in her side, and rankles in her heart. (Dryden)
Which is not a good look for a head of state.
Meantime the rising tow’rs are at a stand;
No labours exercise the youthful band,
Nor use of arts, nor toils of arms they know;
The mole is left unfinish’d to the foe;
The mounds, the works, the walls, neglected lie,
Short of their promis’d heighth, that seem’d to threat the sky (Dryden)
Juno is furious with Venus and confronts her with tricking Dido into falling in love. She demands that Aeneas marry Dido. Venus agrees to arrange a sham marriage, knowing that Jupiter has other plans and the marriage won’t be legal.
The queen, Aeneas, and the Tyrian court
Shall to the shady woods, for sylvan game, resort.
There, while the huntsmen pitch their toils around,
And cheerful horns from side to side resound,
A pitchy cloud shall cover all the plain
With hail, and thunder, and tempestuous rain;
The fearful train shall take their speedy flight,
Dispers’d, and all involv’d in gloomy night;
One cave a grateful shelter shall afford
To the fair princess and the Trojan lord.
I will myself the bridal bed prepare,
If you, to bless the nuptials, will be there:
So shall their loves be crown’d with due delights,
And Hymen shall be present at the rites. (Dryden)
Meantime, the gath’ring clouds obscure the skies:
From pole to pole the forky lightning flies;
The rattling thunders roll; and Juno pours
A wintry deluge down, and sounding show’rs.
The company, dispers’d, to converts ride,
And seek the homely cots, or mountain’s hollow side.
The rapid rains, descending from the hills,
To rolling torrents raise the creeping rills.
The queen and prince, as love or fortune guides,
One common cavern in her bosom hides.
Then first the trembling earth the signal gave,
And flashing fires enlighten all the cave;
Hell from below, and Juno from above,
And howling nymphs, were conscious of their love.
From this ill-omen’d hour in time arose
Debate and death, and all succeeding woes.
The queen, whom sense of honour could not move,
No longer made a secret of her love,
But call’d it marriage, by that specious name
To veil the crime and sanctify the shame. (Dryden)
Fall Out
Word gets around, which doesn’t do Dido’s reputation any good. What’s more, her rejected suitor Iarbas hears about their relationship and gets mad…
Jupiter hears that Aeneas is dilly-dallying and sends Mercury down to tell him to get a move on.
“Degenerate man,
Thou woman’s property, what mak’st thou here,
These foreign walls and Tyrian tow’rs to rear,
Forgetful of thy own? All-pow’rful Jove,
Who sways the world below and heav’n above,
Has sent me down with this severe command:
What means thy ling’ring in the Libyan land?
If glory cannot move a mind so mean,
Nor future praise from flitting pleasure wean,
Regard the fortunes of thy rising heir:
The promis’d crown let young Ascanius wear,
To whom th’ Ausonian scepter, and the state
Of Rome’s imperial name is ow’d by fate.”
Aeneas Bails
Aeneas is not going to go against the Gods. He starts getting ready to leave and wonders how he’s going to break it to Dido. He doesn’t have to worry about that because she’s already heard, and she’s not happy about it.
“I beg you by these tears too truly shed,
By the new pleasures of our nuptial bed;
If ever Dido, when you most were kind,
Were pleasing in your eyes, or touch’d your mind;
By these my pray’rs, if pray’rs may yet have place,
Pity the fortunes of a falling race.
For you I have provok’d a tyrant’s hate,
Incens’d the Libyan and the Tyrian state;
For you alone I suffer in my fame,
Bereft of honour, and expos’d to shame.
Whom have I now to trust, ungrateful guest?
(That only name remains of all the rest!)
What have I left? or whither can I fly?
Had you deferr’d, at least, your hasty flight,
And left behind some pledge of our delight,
Some babe to bless the mother’s mournful sight,
Some young Aeneas, to supply your place,
Whose features might express his father’s face;
I should not then complain to live bereft
Of all my husband, or be wholly left.”
He’s sorry about it but he’s not going to change his mind:
“Fair queen, oppose not what the gods command;
Forc’d by my fate, I leave your happy land.”
To which she replies:
“False as thou art, and, more than false, forsworn!
Not sprung from noble blood, nor goddess-born,
But hewn from harden’d entrails of a rock!
And rough Hyrcanian tigers gave thee suck!”
Dido Loses It
What pangs the tender breast of Dido tore,
When, from the tow’r, she saw the cover’d shore,
And heard the shouts of sailors from afar,
Mix’d with the murmurs of the wat’ry war!
All-pow’rful Love! what changes canst thou cause
In human hearts, subjected to thy laws!
Once more her haughty soul the tyrant bends:
To pray’rs and mean submissions she descends.
Then dire portents she sees,
To hasten on the death her soul decrees:
Strange to relate! for when, before the shrine,
She pours in sacrifice the purple wine,
The purple wine is turn’d to putrid blood,
And the white offer’d milk converts to mud.
This dire presage, to her alone reveal’d,
From all, and ev’n her sister, she conceal’d.
A marble temple stood within the grove,
Sacred to death, and to her murder’d love;
That honour’d chapel she had hung around
With snowy fleeces, and with garlands crown’d:
Oft, when she visited this lonely dome,
Strange voices issued from her husband’s tomb;
She thought she heard him summon her away,
Invite her to his grave, and chide her stay.
Hourly ’tis heard, when with a boding note
The solitary screech owl strains her throat,
And, on a chimney’s top, or turret’s height,
With songs obscene disturbs the silence of the night.
Besides, old prophecies augment her fears;
And stern Aeneas in her dreams appears,
Disdainful as by day: she seems, alone,
To wander in her sleep, thro’ ways unknown,
Guideless and dark; or, in a desert plain,
To seek her subjects, and to seek in vain:
Like Pentheus, when, distracted with his fear,
He saw two suns, and double Thebes, appear;
Or mad Orestes, when his mother’s ghost
Full in his face infernal torches toss’d,
And shook her snaky locks: he shuns the sight,
Flies o’er the stage, surpris’d with mortal fright;
The Furies guard the door and intercept his flight. (Dryden)
The Grisly End
She decides to end it all and instructs her sister to build a massive pyre, pretending it is going to be a kind of love-exorcism. When she realises Aeneas has left, it all kicks off…
Aurora now had left her saffron bed,
And beams of early light the heav’ns o’erspread,
When, from a tow’r, the queen, with wakeful eyes,
Saw day point upward from the rosy skies.
She look’d to seaward; but the sea was void,
And scarce in ken the sailing ships descried.
Stung with despite, and furious with despair,
She struck her trembling breast, and tore her hair. (Dryden)
She curses Aeneas and all future generations leading from him, praying that an avenger (ie Hannibal) will make life difficult for them. She then grabs all the armor and clothes that he left behind and throws it on the pyre.
But furious Dido, with dark thoughts involv’d,
Shook at the mighty mischief she resolv’d.
With livid spots distinguish’d was her face;
Red were her rolling eyes, and discompos’d her pace;
Ghastly she gaz’d, with pain she drew her breath,
And nature shiver’d at approaching death.
Then she stabs herself.
Thrice Dido tried to raise her drooping head,
And, fainting thrice, fell grov’ling on the bed;
Thrice op’d her heavy eyes, and sought the light,
But, having found it, sicken’d at the sight,
And clos’d her lids at last in endless night.
Only at the very end do the gods take pity on her, and Iris affords a gentle release:
Then Juno, grieving that she should sustain
A death so ling’ring, and so full of pain,
Sent Iris down, to free her from the strife
Of lab’ring nature, and dissolve her life.
For since she died, not doom’d by Heav’n’s decree,
Or her own crime, but human casualty,
And rage of love, that plung’d her in despair,
The Sisters had not cut the topmost hair,
Which Proserpine and they can only know;
Nor made her sacred to the shades below.
Downward the various goddess took her flight,
And drew a thousand colours from the light;
Then stood above the dying lover’s head,
And said: “I thus devote thee to the dead.
This off’ring to th’ infernal gods I bear.”
Thus while she spoke, she cut the fatal hair:
The struggling soul was loos’d, and life dissolv’d in air.
